“It gets right down to the real problem that we’ve got in Washington, D.C., is an administration that is listening to people who really don’t have an understanding of what’s going on in the real world,” Perry said on “Squawk Box.” “I think Mr. Buffett is a real intelligent individual, but I can promise you he doesn’t know what’s going on in places that where job creation is a zero because of over-taxation and over-regulation. Dodd-Frank is strangling the small community banks across America — it needs to be repealed. We need to get Washington out of the business of over-regulation — it’s killing our country.”

Perry, in the midst of a four-day stretch in which he is fundraising but holding no public events, said suggestions from rival front-runner Mitt Romney that he believes Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” as he described it in his book “Fed Up!,” are a distraction.

“The idea that a program has been in places for 70 years and we’re going to pitch it out the window is just so much chatter,” Perry said. “What we talked about in the book was, this is one of many places where the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., or Congress or the president of the United States went well outside of what our Founding Fathers — but look, Social Security is in place, that program is going to be there, it’s just got to be transformed, and that’s what were talking about doing. ” On immigration, where Perry has been damaged by his fumbling defense of a Texas policy that allows undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates to state colleges and universities, Perry framed it as a cost-saving measure. His new outlook comes a day after he walked back his debate comments that opponents of the tuition policy “don’t have a heart” in an interview with conservative outlet Newsmax.

“In Texas, and it’s a sovereign state issue, we decided that it was better because the federal government is forcing us to take care of these individuals, and the federal government is who allowed them to come in with their lack of security, we have to make decisions on how to deal with that in Texas,” he told CNBC. “We thought in 2001 it was the best interest of our state to have those young people educated rather than kicking them to the curb and not allowing them be educated and then having to pay for them in some other form with government programs and what have you.”

And Bernanke, whom Perry said in August would be treated “pretty ugly” in Texas for his monetary policy, would not be reappointed if he is elected president.

“I think the statements toward Chairman Bernanke need to be very clear to him that making monetary policy to cover up bad fiscal policy is bad public policy. And that’s what we’re seeing, a Fed that is getting involved in things that, frankly, it does not need to be involved with. Printing more money doesn’t do anything at this particular juncture but to make the dollars in our pocket worth less money. Plus, it also puts us in jeopardy for greater inflation in the future.”